


In A Kinder World

by dandelionknight



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood Magic, F/F, Halloween AU, Love, Rituals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-28 06:00:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16235612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dandelionknight/pseuds/dandelionknight
Summary: The stitches didn’t keep, the bindings couldn’t hold. The spell was broken.There was just so little time.





	In A Kinder World

The stitches didn’t keep, the bindings couldn’t hold. The spell was broken. Fareeha’s body was deteriorating before her eyes and there was nothing, even with all her years as a healer that Angela could do to stop it. She frantically flipped through her grimoire but she knew, oh god she knew, that there was no help within its pages.

When her lover fell on the battlefield that first time, when Angela turned her magic to the forbidden arts she did it with the full knowledge that there was a price to be paid for her hubris. She had hoped the gods found price enough in the deathly pallor of the love she brought back from their reach but she was wrong. The fingers that laced between the witch’s on long evenings held the chill of the grave no matter how warm their hearth’s fire. 

The body that contained Fareeha Amari’s soul for seven years and a day was at its limit. The gods took what they were owed with vengeance. Every hurt that Angela’s magic had soothed had returned, and the witch could do nothing but watch her beloved’s pain. It was a progress over a week. Ever the solider, Fareeha had tried to mask her returning injuries but Angela knew. The only mercy the witch could grant was a tincture of Valerian so that in these final moments Fareeha was in deep, dreamless sleep and would not feel yet another end. 

Angela had seen people die before; it was simply what happened at the end of life and she inevitably bore witness to it due to her profession and her artificially extended lifespan. She had always done what she could; she held their hands and stood by them in their long final nights. But this was different – it was her fault. She turned to the section on transference rituals. If she could take a fraction of it all for Fareeha she would in a heartbeat. But this was ancient magic, beyond her skill. 

There was just so little time. 

She pressed her lips to Fareeha’s cold cheek and brushed away the tears that fell upon her lover’s face. In a kinder world, her tears would revive and her kisses would heal. Her love for the other woman held no intrinsic power to it, but Angela gave it all the same; she always would. Her lover’s breathing came in arrhythmic, shallow gasps. 

She wracked her mind for any ghost of a chance. In all her years what had she seen, what had she learned, what could she do? 

Eichenwalde. It struck her like lightning. Reinhardt, the spirit guardian that haunted the castle. It could be done. It was either this or she would lose her.

She couldn’t save her body, but she could save her soul. 

Angela didn’t need magic to fly down the step into the cottage’s cellar. She gathered up the pieces of Fareeha’s ceremonial armor and laid it out on the floor in the approximation of the human form. A new vessel, one that would never die. She drew the circle with the white ashes of roses. She wiped away the patterns she had drawn in oil and charcoal on her lover’s skin to protect and guide her into the next life and wrote wholly new symbols with the point of her finger; mixing those of death with those of new life, guidance and anchor in equal balance. This was all new territory for her – there was no precedent to follow. So long as the ritual tied to her will, and so long as she was strong enough, it could work. 

The soul would need binding. A magic she detested for the evil she had seen it do. She thought of the Huntress. No, her magic would be no chain of captivity, but a thread gently linking the two lovers together. As long as Angela lived, Fareeha would have the magic she needed to stay. 

It was blood magic. 

She had no time for ornamental blades, but instead grabbed a knife from the kitchen drawer. The same knife that had seen them through the preparation of uncountable breakfasts and dinners; a sign in steel of their life and years together. 

With hands so practiced they betrayed no hint of the tremor Angela felt in her heart, she felt along her leg and located her mark. It would hurt, but for their future it was naught but a sting. The knife sliced through muscle and skin until the bright life’s blood sprang from the wound. She collected what she need in a simple wooden bowl, but did not have the time to waste to heal herself. She spared a moment to bandage it, however, as she would be of no use if she succumbed to the effects of blood loss. It would do for now. 

She dipped two fingers into the blood and drew two last sigils. One, over her lover’s not yet still heart and the other on the interior of the breastplate. It was her greatest work; not for the complexity or the artistry, but for the sheer feeling she put into each stroke. 

She grabbed her staff, thankful its place was nearby. She dipped the end of the Caduceus into the bowl and the staff began to glow with brilliant golden light. Angela thought of love; of Fareeha’s face on warm summer evenings and her clever hands on late autumn nights and of her laughter in the darkness of winter and her embrace in the freshness of spring. She pulled each memory – of their first meeting and first kiss and their first fight. Of the last words they spoke in the evenings and the memory of her final breath. She traced it into the cold, unfeeling metal of the armor until it warmed into that of life. The vessel was ready. She laid the still glowing staff between Fareeha and the armor as a conduit. 

Now was the hardest part.

She took the blade still slick with her own blood and knelt by the prostrate form. 

“I love you, I’m sorry,” she whispered in the same breath before Angela slid the blade between Fareeha’s ribs and into her heart. 

The blood, dark and sluggish, flowed for a lifetime before it touched the end her staff. Blue flame crackled along its length and leapt into the armor. She watched, transfixed and unmoving. The armor, Fareeha, sat up and then stood. 

Angela shot to her feet towards her lover, but she stumbled, from the shock or her still bleeding wound. Artificial arms reached out to catch her and pull her into an embrace. Gauntlets reached up to caress their lover. The fingers were warm, almost hot as they brushed away the tears that trailed down Angela’s cheeks for the second time that day.

_I love you too._

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by the differences in Pharah's two Halloween skins. I really hope I get the new one. Thanks for reading! Happy Halloween event!


End file.
